Last week one of my friends sent a photo of a handwritten contract dated May 17, 1834, at the Cherokee Bay Settlement. "We the subscribers wishing to give our children the advantages of an education do bind ourselves to pay Yale Gellette or his order the sum of two dollars and fifty cents per quarter for the instruction of each schollar annexed to our names," it begins.
Then it specifies that for the quarter beginning on May 22, Mr. Gellette is to "devote his time and attention to the instruction of our schollars" from 9:00 in the morning until 4:00 in the afternoon, with a break from noon until 1:00."
The contract does not specify how many days per week Mr. Gellette was expected to teach; it was drawn up on a Saturday, meaning that was a day for business, so I would guess six. Beyond the payment of $2.50 per student per quarter, the signers of the contract agree to provide for the teacher's board unless they are able to get 20 students, in which case he will provide his own board.
Finally, the contract adds, "The school is to be taught in the house erected for the purpose of publick worship and for a school house in this settlement near Mr. Murry's." Fifteen men (beginning with Isaac Murry) signed their names, each following with the number of scholars he intended to send; most intended to send only one. Assuming it met (I hope it did, and that it flourished for many quarters), the school would be called a subscription school because the individuals making a contract with the teacher literally signed (scribed) their names beneath (sub) the contract.
On reading this old document, my first question was where was Cherokee Bay? The Encyclopedia of Arkansas and the 1946 history of Randolph County that I consulted say that Cherokee Bay was the original name of the town that was renamed Reyno (now called Old Reyno) in honor of Dennis Wells Reynolds, who built the first house and hotel there in 1857. But the school contract clearly indicates that there were at least 15 households at the Cherokee Bay Settlement by 1834 and that the settlers had already built a house "for publick worship."
The name itself raises two questions: Was it settled by Cherokee Indians (or perhaps inhabited by Cherokee hunters), and just where is the bay? It is quite possible that between 1810 and 1828, some Cherokee were present above the place where the Current River meets the Black River (the attractive wedge of land where Old Reyno is situated).
A trip to the Arkansas State Archives to look at the Cherokee Bay vertical file yielded a single piece of paper related to Russell P. Baker's 1977 research into Arkansas post offices. The paper provided township, range, and section data for the Cherokee Bay Post Office, which was established in 1857. The section in question is northeast of Biggers; the Current River divides it, with about two-thirds of the land to its east. The section contains an oxbow near enough to the river that in high water the land between the oxbow and river might flood to form a bay.
The spot is about two miles west of Old Reyno. While there has been some mixing of names, it is clear that Cherokee Bay Settlement existed decades prior to Mr. Reynold's building a house and hotel on the site that would become Reyno in 1886. (Reyno became Old Reyno in the early 1900s, when the town moved closer to the Saint Louis-San Francisco Railway, aka the Frisco.)
Goodspeed's Biographical and Historical Memoirs of Northeast Arkansas (1889) mentions James R. Knotts and wife, married in South Carolina, who in 1829 "located at Cherokee Bay, and about six years later took up their abode on a farm in the neighborhood." Dennis Wells Reynolds, notes Goodspeed's, "is self-educated, and when only seventeen years of age entered mercantile life at Cherokee Bay"--so Cherokee Bay was already supporting commerce when he arrived there. It goes on to explain that Reynolds "was the first to clear the land and build where the town of Reyno now stands" and "erected the first dwelling house and hotel."
So Cherokee Bay and Reyno (now old Reyno) were two distinct places that have been conflated in official histories. I'm glad to get the matter sorted out.
As for the people in the contract, some of the names of the signers have persisted in Randolph County. (Winningham is one.) The teacher might have moved on; I found a New York native named Thomas Y. Gillett living in Colorado, Texas, in 1850. (Many a school teacher in early Arkansas came from the Northeast.) Another Thomas Gillett, quite possibly the same fellow, turns up in San Bernardino, Calif., in 1879, age 68, meaning that in 1834 he would have been 23, a typical age for a teacher in the early 19th century.
The contract does not mention subject matter, provision for books, maps, or supplies, or the ages of the scholars. I would imagine that much was left to the discretion of the teacher, and that he was held to account for demonstrable increases in his students' knowledge and skills.